


Night Brood

by FireFleshAndBlood



Category: Hannibal (TV), LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works
Genre: Bestiality, Cannibalism, Creepy, Gore, Lovecraftian, M/M, Mating, Monsters, Necrophilia, attempted suicide, dark rituals, dub-con, erotic birth, really creepy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-20 20:01:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1523765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireFleshAndBlood/pseuds/FireFleshAndBlood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal has sussed out the cause of his patient's distress. Too bad Will Graham doesn't want his help. Too bad that Hannibal has discovered his secret. Too bad that the darkness at the edges of Will's vision is closing in and he's getting hungrier by the day...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to a really creepy fanfic. 
> 
> I'm going to slap you all with a big fat warning. Here it is; this is a really messed up story even by canon standards. The tags are for the whole story, not one chapter so I wanted to give you all a heads up in case some of you wandered in without reading them. Let's get out the laundry list - dub-con, gore, violence, mating, breeding, erotic birth, mpreg, cannibalism, bestiality, necrophilia (bones only), attempted suicide, dark rituals. Probably a six chapter long feast. 
> 
> Phew. That covers it all I think. If any of that makes you want to run screaming from this fic, I can't blame you. But if you are in for the Lovecraft and the horrible goings on, welcome to a very satisfying (dark) place. Enjoy. 
> 
> Or not.
> 
> Reach me on [dreamwidth](http://firefleshandblood.dreamwidth.org/)

Night Brood

 

I

 

_It's Will's sixteenth birthday and unlike most teenagers who are preparing for an evening out or a party with their friends he's in his room alone thinking about the horrible night to come._

 

_In his hands is a ritual robe and on his nightstand a book full of words he's supposed to say when the darkness comes to the ritual grounds and Will would give anything not to be himself at that moment. To not hear his father say 'it's time, Will' in the kindest way he could muster._

 

_He wore a matching robe, that was what had stood out to Will. They had gone out to face the horrors as a team but only one of them had made it through the night._

 

_It was supposed to have been Will who was touched and judged by preternatural standards. He still suffers guilt over it years later though it's irrational and stupid._

 

_They lead him to a stone alter in the middle of the woods. He barely remembers the walk there but he remembers the way they disrobed him until he was nude, the proffered sacrifice shivering and waiting for the worst._

 

_If there is one thing that has remained a constant in Will's life it's a conscious niggling fact in the back of his mind that he's a surviving martyr. Something meant to suffer in the stead of someone else. It wouldn't take a psychiatrist to figure out why it developed into a full blown pathology in his twenties. Or why it led to a brief incarceration in a psych ward._

 

_Especially not when they find out what happened next._

 

_Will laid down on the stone alter scared and cold but knowing what was supposed to happen wouldn't be so bad. And yet, it all went bad. Terribly. In a way none of them could have predicted._

 

_Half the town had turned up in their own dark robes and had begun chanting in a circle around him. The creature from the stars would fall down slowly, touch Will in the centre of his forehead and then he'd either go mad or accept whatever message came with them. It was his coming of age ceremony. His right. A gift from chthonic space._

 

_But that wasn't what happened. Instead the clouds rolled in and the voices around him grew warped and strange and then the screaming started and didn't stop._

 

_A full twenty-four hours later Will was wandering naked and blood soaked in the hills, frozen to the bone. The officers from the local jurisdiction who usually ignored the cultists in good faith (tradition went a long way in the south) couldn't ignore what they had found. And what they had heard._

 

_They wrapped him in blankets and took him to the hospital and didn't tell him for days that his father was missing. Half the village was, and the rest..._

 

_They had been spread all over the hills in pieces._

 

_Something had gone terribly wrong._

 

“Did you give up religion before or after the revelations at the hospital?” Hannibal asked.

 

“I gave it up the moment my father put on a dark cloak and told me what my 'heritage' was and how proud I would make my absent mother if I was chosen to ascend,” Will said, “the lousy codeword for human sacrifice.”

 

Will was watching the snow slowly falling past the window in Hannibal's office. Hannibal regarded his new patient with the utmost curiosity. The man in his thirties was a marvel, a survivor, and curious in his habits, words and deeds. Empathetic to a fault, miserable from a tragic past but not beaten by what he had seen, things lesser minds would have been wrecked even considering.

 

The cases the FBI had him consulting for were the grimmest, most mysterious and most brutal. As though now they knew Will couldn't break they would bend him as far as he would go.

 

Hannibal longed to see him break. He wanted to see what would happen. But not today.

 

“And now you profile monsters,” Hannibal said.

 

“In some ways it's better than being a cop,” Will said, “in others, it's worse.”

 

“Far less emotional attachments working in the police,” Hannibal politely supplied.

 

“It wasn't a problem before,” Will said.

 

“The man you killed arguably deserved his end,” Hannibal countered, “but not his daughter.”

 

“Her case is being debated,” Will said, “the cannibalism is the 'x' factor.”

 

“Devouring human flesh opens doors inside,” Hannibal said, he knew this information firsthand, “that cannot always be closed.”

 

“So it goes,” Will said quietly.

 

“They won't let you see her,” Hannibal said, it wasn't a question but a statement of fact.

 

“They're keeping me away,” Will said, “because they don't really know what doors I've opened.”

 

In his mind palace Hannibal could imagine the young Will Graham arms extended, gloriously nude on a foreboding hill whipped wild by the wind. His pale arms would have trembled in the moonlight and his expression would have wavered between frank terror and confusion. The grey slate of the alter would have made Will's skin the more porcelain and translucent and his blue eyes would have appeared all the more innocent. The unknowing sent to sacrifice.

 

“Or what you will open,” Hannibal said.

 

As Hannibal observed Will Graham the air around him shimmered with a sinister power. And suddenly as the dank smell on Will's clothes washed over him, Hannibal began to understand where Will's fears came from and the origins of the doubts the FBI had concerning his state of mind. It became apparent that Will was desperately trying to avoid a known inevitable event but instead it was bleeding out.

 

Hannibal quietly moved towards Will and inhaled above his left shoulder. What he caught on the high notes of his scent was a spectacular surprise.

 

“Did you just smell me?” Will said, incredulous.

 

“Difficult to avoid. I really must introduce you to a finer aftershave. That smells like something with a ship on the bottle,” Hannibal said.

 

Will Graham smelled like blood and darkness, like a hellscape wrapped up in pomegranates and death. Like the fresh clean scent of broken earth made ready for limitless graves. Perched in Hannibal's mouth was the name he would call when the gates were opened. _Ia, Shub-Niggurath the Black Goat of the Wood with a Thousand Young!_

 

“I keep getting it for Christmas,” Will admitted.

 

They were still in Hannibal's office, their safe space away from the FBI and Will's difficult cases. But with Hannibal's discovery the sacrificial alter now stood in the space between them as though it were real. With blade, bells and flame. The opening of the circle would begin soon, the calling of the four corners. The ritual would begin and then the gates would open, releasing the desperate truth Will was hiding.

 

Hannibal was more than willing to help speed up the process.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the first warning appears. 
> 
> Bestiality, fantasized non-con and murder. Yeah I'm starting hard out of the gate with this one (and it's probably the least disturbing thing in this fic). 
> 
> Four more parts of pure filth and weirdness after this. Enjoy!

 

II

Most days Will taught at Quantico unless Jack pulled him in for a special assignment. The last few days he had been pulled from the classroom to hunt a man who made angels out of demons. Or what he had assumed were demons, Will had his own set of devils who looked nothing like the Judeo-Christian variety. He had been requested to give his final word on the morgue report, usually he was in Jack's office but this time he was leaning up against the cold, sterile walls in the examination room.

 

The body had been laid out in the morgue earlier and examined by the forensics team Jack preferred. Will was on nodding terms with Katz but preferred to keep his distance from the other two. Zeller had taken an immediate dislike to him, whether it was from a superiority complex or his sixth sense working a little better than the rest, Will couldn't say. Price was far too obnoxious for his own good, well meaning though he was.

 

It didn't come as much of a surprise to Will that Elliott Buddish was not just a possessed man but a sick and dying one too.

 

“It wasn't a brain tumour,” Zeller said excitedly, “it was a tiny Shoggoth growing in his head. Which explains our slow, creature induced insanity. He must have swallowed some eggs. I found a black, fatty mass in his brain with a lot of eyes and a real gross slime around it. Luckily, it died when he did.”

 

Zeller pushed the petrie dish over to Katz and she looked at it with disgust.

 

“Well,” Katz said, “I'm glad I skipped breakfast.”

 

“We'll call that one a parasite,” Price replied, “on the medical record.”

 

“What do you think,” Jack said to Will, “a parasite, or pathology?”

 

Will considered the creature, he considered his own miserable transformation. He recalled the righteousness in which Eliot Buddish murdered his victims. Their bodies transformed into beautiful angels who would save him from the demons lurking just under his skin.

 

“A little of both,” Will replied.

 

He didn't mention what he saw when he had found the body. That Buddish had found him out in his dying breath in a barn in Baltimore. That his soul though poisoned by the monster in his brain was still a golden shimmering light against Will's all consuming darkness. That Buddish's noble sacrifice had indeed freed him from the beast that was consuming his mind. To a heaven or a hell exactly, Will couldn't say. His sight didn't extend that far.

 

The unconventional psychiatrist might be helping Jack feel better about putting him out in the field, but Will wasn't sure how he felt about it.

 

“Where are you heading now?” Katz asked him as she marked the cause of death in a file.

 

“Home,” Will said.

 

The door closed behind him with a flat thud, muffling any offers for drinks or company. Will observed the empty hallways and the quiet hush that extended over Quantico when most of its students and instructors had gone home for the evening. For some it might be lonely. In Will's case he assumed it was better to keep his distance so no one's expectations would be damaged when the inevitable time came.

 

Will returned home to utter darkness. His house had once been his boat on the water, his illusion of safety. It still was in a way but as Will could see the swirling nexus above it and feel the darkness growing inside him, it had become more of a foreboding crypt to hide in. There wasn't any real safety anywhere from himself. He didn't need to turn on a light or wait for his eyes to adjust to the deep forest night, another way in which he was changing. He walked from the car to the dark front door without turning on a single light.

 

The average person never noticed the unseen world, it took trauma or a lot of training to clearly begin defining the sixth sense into categories plain enough to make sense. Most people who had the gift or the training could tell there was something strange about Will but not precisely where the strangeness was coming from. But Will had known, he had figured it out during his stay at the hospital.

 

When he watched the walls ooze with blood and the windows bend themselves into impossible shapes and could hear dark thoughts coming through the grates above his bed, he began to form his thesis. His body was a portal and darkness was leaking out. That was his conclusion as he pondered the ritual that had marred his adolescence and the strange happenings after.

 

The dogs greeted him when he got inside and barked excitedly while their tails wagged. To a normal person they were normal dogs, maybe a little shabby due to the hard effects of having been strays for so long. But to Will's hyper active senses he could see the shadows growing around them. They were big, dark and black like enormous shaggy phantoms with glowing red eyes. Hell hounds, monsters, demon beasts. And Will knew it was his fault, his influence over a number of years that had made them this way. That they had grown in intelligence in ways normal dogs don't, that they had also developed a taste for fresh meat that went beyond simple canine fondness. Would it have been better if Will would have left them to starve or was it better to make monsters out of normal animals so they survived? He didn't have a direct answer.

 

Will loved dogs supernatural or not, so he had fed them, kept them warm and slept next to them in his bed. Even if it was a poison to be near him, they weren't afraid the way other people could be. Will wished he had the same ease with his transformation that they had with theirs. The clock was ticking though it moved on its own, warped time and Will was well aware that the question of what he would become was too wild and untamed to risk allowing. Upstairs in an unused storage room he had a box in a drawer that was filled with a lethal dose of morphine. After much consideration, he had decided that if he had to go, that was the easiest and least painful way to do it. So he kept his backup plan even as his mind became haunted with urges he couldn't name and his head filled with murders that didn't belong to him but made him hungry for more. His forts were eroding around the few kind things in his life that were rapidly transforming into the unsavoury.

 

He would help the FBI catch killers and teach his classes and pretend for as long as he could that he was normal, even while knowing he wasn't.

 

After feeding his pack, Will undressed and laid in his bed and whistled for his dogs to come near. They climbed around his bed and snuffled his hair. He laughed a little, their breath made him ticklish. He felt their hot tongues touching the backs of his ears and neck.

 

He once thought it was a grotesque loop, that the comfort he wanted from his pack had overwhelmed what they wanted. But now he understood. They thought he was a beast because he was becoming one and they wanted him the way any animal would want their own.

 

What would his unconventional psychiatrist have to say about this, Will thought as one of his dogs crawled on top of his back.

 

He could feel the claws sink into his skin and his breath hitched, it made him feel good. Made him feel alive. It had become a perverse ritual, maybe even a mockery of a ritual that had happened already that Will couldn't remember. He wasn't entirely sure what was real, anymore.

 

His newest stray Winston had ambled off the bed and watched with curiosity what was happening.

 

“It's ok Winston,” Will said, hoping his voice soothed him, “I'm ok.”

 

It wouldn't be long before Winston would want his turn too. His breath hitched as the monster he had called Buster became more than a little dog, a monstrously huge demonic wolf. Its paws pressed Will's shoulders into the bed and its heavy weight nearly crushed his spine but he wanted it, he arched his back.

 

There was something inside of him that wanted the sexual abuse, that longed for couplings in dark underground places and forgotten pagan hills. The imaginary being in his head didn't ask for consent, it just took with the wild abandon only a beast could have. The dog panted and made a strange growling noise as its leaking cock searched for Will's orifice.

 

It wasn't a gentle entry, it was a full thrust that had the animal seated inside of his body. Will's back arched and he clenched his sheets in his fists.

 

The penetration had really hurt at first when Will hadn't been entirely sure what was going on but it had eased as his insides morphed and changed along with the rest of him. He could take a rough pounding from his animals without too much discomfort aside from the first, hard fuck. In fact, he had started to enjoy it a little too much for his conscience.

 

“Slow down,” Will groaned, “it's too fast.”

 

He moaned and panted as he was filled up by a demon dog's cock who wouldn't care or listen to his begging. It made him feel animal, it made him feel whole.

 

It made him imagine his rape at night in the fields as a teenager when everything had gone dark and the taste of blood had lingered in his mouth. When he had woken up powerful and alive, his village devoured and his skin ravaged. He wasn't entirely sure anymore that his fantasy hadn't been the truth.

 

Will growled low and dangerous as the dog fucked him, it's hips moving and thrusting deep inside (but not deep enough, he wanted to be pushed so far he went over the edge, until he was nothing but beast). He could feel the teeth scraped by his tongue that had grown in instead of his molars after they had fallen out one day in the shower. They were sharp like a predator's.

 

Will screamed as the dog knotted him and growled in his ear as a warning to keep still. He felt the fleshy protrusion spread him wider and lock inside. He shuddered from his scalp to his toes, _yes yes yes_ his vile instincts whispered, _it's almost what we want._

 

While the mutant Buster adjusted himself and made Will grunt in discomfort, the other dogs who had been transformed began circling the bed restlessly. Will could see Winston watching them from across the room. He was proud the poor dog hadn't dove under the couch to hide.

 

In the safety of his home and trapped under an animals knot, Will indulged in the urges his body was screaming at him. He thought about killing. He thought about killing Hobbs who was, at least, not a very nice person and perfectly deserving of murder. The gun he had used in reality would be unsatisfying, this time he would use his bare hands. He thought about Abigail watching while he ate her father piece by piece. Will considered how the blood might feel running down his face as he roared with animal rage and power.

His body burned.

The blood was all he could think about. The blood was all he became.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we return with more disturbed happenings. This is where the necrophilia tag comes into play, and more bestiality. We're halfway through and almost at my favourite chapter...yes, it will get even weirder.

III

 

Creating an invitation that would entice a person who was disinclined to accept one was no small task. It took a great deal of work without the subject being in any way aware they were being slowly softened to relent. Hannibal had risen to the occasion and his unofficial patient Will Graham had finally agreed to a meal at his home.

 

“I've never seen his house,” Alana said, while she helped Hannibal prepare the vegetable accompaniments, “his address isn't even on file.”

 

“And that disturbs you?” Hannibal said.

 

The bouquet garni he had prepared would go well with a stew made from the flesh of a particularly rude exotic animal trainer that Hannibal had the misfortune of meeting at a gala. The trainer hadn't been kind to his charges during his career, Will might appreciate the poetic justice if he were aware.

 

The meal would be special and although the ingredients were not beyond Hannibal's exotic fare for his guests, the purpose behind it was entirely new.

 

“Yes,” Alana said, “it's clear that he's deeply troubled over something but I can't seem to figure out what. I want to be his friend but he acts hostile to everybody for reasons I can't begin to fathom. It's a defence mechanism that much is clear.”

 

Her dress was beautiful, Hannibal noted. The royal blue brought out her dark brown hair and pale features and her face though in a mieux of frustration was lovelier for it against the dramatic colours.

 

“I want to be his friend,” she said, “not just out of a professional curiosity but because I do know what he does at the FBI and how demanding that can be on a person. Someone should care, besides you.”

 

“Are you under the impression that Jack Crawford doesn't?” Hannibal asked.

 

The conversation was going into a very interesting place. Hannibal had no doubt that his colleague had already confronted Agent Crawford on the matter. She must be invested indeed in Will Graham's welfare to have even considered it.

 

“We talked,” she admitted, “he wasn't very forthcoming. I know Will's medical history is spotty, the event on the hill is a matter of public record, at least parts of it. There's a certain professional distance an investigator has to take before they can see the situation clearly. But with that distance comes a passivity towards the victims.”

 

“Will is a victim,” Hannibal said, as he arched his brow, “of the bureau?”

 

“I don't know,” she said, “I was hoping you could help me sort that out.”

 

“I'll try my best,” Hannibal said.

 

Their guest arrived to dinner with his eyes downcast and his jaw set in stubborn resistance. His grim eyes landed on Hannibal (what a thrill it would be to watch the man's becoming, to see him flounder and tumble into a madness so deep there's no way out), and then Alana. They softened slightly.

 

“Good evening, Dr. Lecter,” Will said, his Louisiana accent deliciously hovered, “thanks for the invitation, though I still maintain that I'll be poor company.”

 

“We'll decide that for ourselves,” Alana said.

 

Will smiled hesitantly and allowed Hannibal to take his coat. It's obvious the agent is smitten by his colleague but Hannibal can't blame him in the slightest; Alana is charming and beautiful and seemed very far away from the horrors of the world despite her intimate understanding of them. Hannibal took the coat to the hallway closet and once he was sure no one was watching, pressed his nose gently to its folds. He smelled the cheap cologne, the poor laundry soap and the scent of motor oil. But he also smelled Will's skin underneath of it all, quivering and fresh. He smelled the dogs, a strange acrid scent. He conjectured what Will had been up to. Hannibal smiled at the thought, a real smile. The kind with teeth.

 

At the dinner table Will was quiet and Alana careful. Hannibal swirled his wine in its glass, a beautiful Oddero Barolo and is slightly amused the way Will drank his in quick gulps with little time between to let it breathe. A whiskey man if he ever saw one, forced to make do. It would not surprise him to discover that Will had a drinking problem off hours. But lately, Jack had been keeping him busy and away from his bottle.

 

“Why won't they let me see her,” Will asked.

 

The conversation Alana had been skillfully avoiding the entire night had finally made its appearance.

 

“The first person she talks to can't be you,” Alana said, “she needs a safe, clinical environment-”

 

“With all the occult protection the FBI can provide,” Will said bitingly, “if she is changing there isn't anything anyone can do about that. The Old Ones will come back and collect their own protection of the FBI or not and if she isn't released to the wild, things could get ugly.”

 

“I know,” Alana said, “and I understand how you feel. But the fact remains her status is in question right now.”

 

Will froze under her concerned gaze unsure if she had guessed his situation or was merely making unrelated allusions. His shoulders tightened, then gently relaxed. All of these things took only a few seconds but Hannibal watched the performance eagerly.

 

“Justice is a night light,” Will said, his voice shook slightly, “at best. If the FBI serve her up as part of a ritual to appease the Old Ones no one would complain. That isn't justice, it's an execution.”

 

“She could survive the test,” Alana said, “she's smart and resourceful.”

 

Will laughed coldly, “no one really survives the test Dr. Bloom. They either live or die in various screwed up ways.”

 

“You survived,” she said quietly.

 

Will had taken his napkin wiped it aggressively across his face and then threw it in front of him as though it had been the one to slight him.

 

“I think we're done here,” Will said.

 

Hannibal had been waiting for this moment. The look on Alana's face was one of perplexed shock.

 

“Will!” she cried.

 

Will had staggered to his feet, his arms trembled as he gripped the table white knuckled. Hannibal rose himself, he knew what would come next.

 

“If you want to lure someone into your experiments-” Will said it viciously, as though he could tear the word down as much as its owner, “next time tell them in advance so they won't have to bother to show up.”

 

Will stood too fast and his body toppled over against the wall. Shocked and embarrassed, Will made an effort to right himself while Alana leaped from her seat to his side.

 

“Are you all right?” she asked, her voice filled with concern.

 

Will flushed charmingly along his neck when her hands touched him.

 

“I'm fine,” he croaked out.

 

“Wine on an empty stomach,” Hannibal said, “is never recommended.”

 

“I'm leaving,” Will said.

 

“You can't drive like this!” Alana said.

 

“I'll drive,” Hannibal said, “if you'll allow me an hour to allow the alcohol to leave my system.”

 

“No,” Will said, “I know the way _your kind_ works, Dr. Lecter. One drive and then it's a favour in return and I'm right back where I started with you.”

 

Fortunately, Will was referring to Hannibal's predilection for psychiatry and not his other, more unscrupulous hobbies.

 

“I don't think you have a choice,” Alana said, her lips in a thin line.

 

She was loveliest when she was angry, it was really quite becoming, though Hannibal was thankful he hadn't often been on the other end of her ire. She was a strong colleague and wasn't to be underestimated, her means were occasionally underhanded despite her insistence on ethics being the highest of priorities. How quickly they went when her ambition was threatened. All of Alana's little contradictions made her so intriguing. And Hannibal had no doubt she would help him, in the end.

 

“All right,” Will acquiesced miserably.

 

The sweat was beginning to collect under his collar, Hannibal could smell it.

 

“Sit, Will,” Hannibal directed, politely.

 

Will Graham did as he was told and slouched like a boy caught at school for bad behaviour. His expression was mulish, taciturn. Hannibal quietly loved it.

 

“Thank-you,” Alana said.

 

She gave Hannibal a look that spoke of her immense worry for Will's mental state and then quickly flicked her gaze back to the man who was glaring at her now.

 

It took both Hannibal and Alana to manhandle Will into the Bentley. His legs were unsteady and the flush across his skin though beautiful, was also feverish. Once in the vehicle, Alana bade them goodnight and headed towards her home.

 

“I hope you're up for the drive,” she had said to him, “I heard Will lives somewhere near Wolf Trap.”

 

With slurred speech Will gave Hannibal power over him and the ability to find him anytime he liked. They began their long journey through Baltimore, towards the edges of the city and into the dark streets lined with more and more trees. It was well into the country before Hannibal checked on his companion.

 

“How do you feel?” Hannibal asked Will.

 

“I feel,” Will appeared to struggle for the right words, his forehead wrinkled in consternation when he found them, “good. Very good.”

 

Hannibal looked at him fondly, his wayward charge.

 

They arrived at the house. There weren't any lights on outside but Hannibal hardly expected there to be. Will stumbled from the car and turned on a dim porch light as Hannibal followed.

 

“You don't have to come in,” Will said, his pupils blown wide and his voice mildly slurred, “if you don't want to.”

 

“I'd very much like to,” Hannibal said.

 

Hannibal entered Will's home and he was assailed by two scents; the overwhelming smell of dog and the stale smell of death.

 

The dogs were evident, where the other smell came from had Hannibal looking to the ceiling and imagining beyond the bare bulb that hung there. The house was in disrepair, it would have begun as a restoration project but quickly would have become destructive. It was a natural effect from attempting to build a lair without knowing anything about suitable locations or even how to begin.

 

The sound of creaking upholstery suggested Will had slumped into a worn chair. When Hannibal pressed his fingers to Will's throat he came alive again with a gasp as his eyes fluttered like butterflies.

 

“You drugged me,” Will slurred.

 

“The meal on your plate was the same as everyone else's,” Hannibal said reasonably.

 

“I know you drugged me,” Will said with emphasis, “I don't normally feel like this.”

 

“And how exactly do you feel?” Hannibal asked.

 

“Drugged,” Will snapped, he licked his lips then said softly, “I feel like the scales have fallen from my eyes.”

 

“Concerning?” Hannibal said.

 

“What's happening to me Dr. Lecter,” Will said, “I can't tell where I begin and where this thing ends.”

 

Will Graham's pale fingers twitched listless against the worn arm of the chair and Hannibal knew they were the motions of a man who wished desperately for a gun between his hands.

 

“I hardly know what you're talking about,” Hannibal said, “you seem perfectly normal to me.”

 

“I'm not normal,” Will said, voice cracked, “somebody normal doesn't...”

 

Will stuttered and then his eyes closed.

 

“Go up to the second floor and see,” Will whispered.

 

Hannibal held his expression of concern on Will while the other simply closed his eyes and waited. The possibilities were intriguing, Hannibal quietly made his way towards the unfinished stairway. Up the stairs he went into the dark until he reached the landing. There was an ugly light bulb on a string of wire and Hannibal turned it on with a flick of the switch. The walls when illuminated were an ugly yellow with worn flower wallpaper that licked and curled along the room. Dampness had stolen the life from the pattern but there was something unsettling about its kaleidoscope design. There were two rooms down the hall, a derelict bathroom that was filled with plywood and then another empty bedroom. Hannibal flicked on the light and he couldn't contain the jump his eyebrows made as they recognized their contents.

 

There were tax filing boxes, the kind lawyers used to store their papers, filled to the brim with great quantities of bones. Hannibal eyed their contents and picked one up out of its box, it was a human femur. There must have been hundreds crammed into the tiny room, clean and white like they had been boiled or scrubbed. Hannibal could recognize the handy work from medical institution, they must have been stolen from their original hiding places and brought to the house piecemeal over a number of years.

 

It isn't a surprise that the nest hasn't been built yet as Will must have been compelled to collect the bones without any idea what to do with them when he brought them home, besides hiding them from those who would take them away. This is why his address wasn't in his files and only dispersed among the few FBI credentials he needed to be inducted into the field. One visitor who noticed his unusual 'collection' and they'd send him in for an evaluation, something neither Will nor Jack could afford to have with unusual cases piling up and only one agent able to discern them.

 

From the boxes Hannibal selected a long, tapered thigh bone. It's slim, the size of an adolescent female, something Hannibal thought Will would like. He brought it downstairs where Will was still sitting with a glazed, far away look on his face.

 

“That's quite a collection,” Hannibal said, “it must have taken you many years to achieve it.”

 

“I can't stop taking them,” Will said, “I don't even know why I do it. Every damn hospital and morgue in the city is missing...parts. I spent months scoping them out, slipping them away.”

 

“I'm curious how it gratifies you,” Hannibal said.

 

He placed the slim thigh bone on the glass table and sat next to it, letting it hover between them both as a physical object and a concept.

 

“Desire actualized,” Will said, quietly.

 

“Afraid of being actualized,” Hannibal said, “what sorts of terrifying desires are in you, Will?”

 

Will licked his lips.

 

“Come to my bedroom,” he said, “and find out.”

 

The bedroom was behind a half wall past the kitchen. The bone was clutched in Will's hands and he strode with purpose to his bedside table. Hannibal noticed a few dogs came over to his side and he offered them a hand to sniff. They butted their noses against him and then sat in a neat pile on their dog cushion across from the bed.

 

The beside drawer was yanked open and Will took out a squeeze container of KY lubricant. With an indifferent look, he picked up the bone and slathered it with the jelly.

 

“Allow me,” Hannibal said, as Will reached for his own fly.

 

Deftly, Hannibal unbuttoned Will's trousers and peeled the denim slowly down his legs. Heady musk from days spent sleeping in sweat and a general unwashed male smell assaulted Hannibal's nose but the other, deeper odour was much sweeter and more pleasant. Will began to tremble, possibly from embarrassment or shame. They both knew what was going to happen and both wanted it, though Will's need had become desperation from a place he was barely aware of.

 

“Lie down,” Hannibal said.

 

Will shakily took his shirts off, dropped them and sat uneasily on his bed in his faded boxers.

 

In the strange glow of a single bed lamp Hannibal took in Will Graham's glazed countenance, each breath that passed through his lips and the sweat that clung to every inch of his skin. The mattress was faded and the sheets stale from weeks without being changed but it was beauty Hannibal saw in Will Graham, laying on his back his thighs spread, panting and waiting.

 

“I'm going to help you, Will,” Hannibal said calmly.

 

Hannibal pressed his hands to Will's thighs who jolted at the sudden touch. He helped Will from his boxers, revealing a perfect if shockingly pale male body. He admired his pleasantly formed penis and testicles, the way the whiteness of his skin had washed out his flesh until the veins both blue and red could be clearly seen with so much blood pumping through them. Will was erect but Hannibal knew attention to that area was not what he wanted.

 

Hannibal picked up the bone from the bedside table and Will watched with half lidded eyes as he rested his hand on the side of the bed by Will's hip and gently began to position the bone at Will's orifice. All muscles gave some resistance, Hannibal knew to go slowly and allow Will's body to adjust. The greater trochanter would have to slide into him first and the bend would be challenging but with Will's extreme arousal loosening his internal muscles Hannibal had no doubt he would be up to the task.

 

“Hannibal,” Will said, in a reverent tone.

 

The sound of his voice trembling was enough to make Hannibal want to do more than be a passive observer but at this point in time, it was not wise. Hannibal held back and focused on Will's experience instead.

 

Gently they made it to the lesser trochanter and though it was difficult to slide the bone in and out Will was already so far gone he might as well have been on some other planet. Hannibal watched Will's abdomen swell and tighten with each breath, the muscles covered in a sheen of sweat, his mouth nearly slack with pleasure. Hannibal glanced back at Will's face and to his delight noticed his eyes had changed from their ordinary blue to a crystalline aqua.

 

The dogs had begun to swarm around the bed, possibly lured by the smell of Will's arousal. Hannibal gently removed the bone from Will's body, allowing his orifice to relax and the greater trochanter to slide out. Will's body shuddered as each inch was removed his cock bouncing on his stomach his pale flesh speckled with wet precum.

 

“What's happening?” Will said, his voice thick.

 

Hannibal gently guides Will onto his stomach stroking his hands down the long pale expanse of his back.

 

“I'm giving you what you want,” Hannibal said, he turned to the dogs, “up to the bed.”

 

One dog took the lead, obviously the largest of Will's small pack. It expertly climbed on top of Will who whimpered hoarsely while his mouth slackened and blood drooled from the edge. He spat two bloody pink pieces from his mouth and Hannibal had no doubt they were small molars. The spit leaves a trail across the bed not unlike high arching arterial spray. The dog eagerly mounted Will who groaned and panted, his harsh breath sending saliva spattering across the once white sheets in tiny red drops. His spine is a perfect arch to accept the dog's frantically working hips and while Will's orifice is hidden from view Hannibal has no doubt it's an angry pink, flushed and full from a rough opening.

 

Hannibal resisted no longer the desire to move closer. He pressed his hand gently on the exposed flesh of Will's upper thigh, careful to avoid the dog. It growled a warning at Hannibal but relented as it encountered no reprimands from the rival in the room. Will gasped, his body being pleasured by the animal mounting him with the twin confusion of a more human body caressing him.

 

“Why,” Will panted, his voice stuttered with very thrust, “won't you fuck me?”

 

An admission would give the game away too early. Hannibal said nothing and stroked along the pale flank that was so tempting.

 

“Beautiful,” he said softly, instead.

 

Hannibal saw the whites of Will's eyes as they rolled back into his head. The dog rapidly reached climax and knotted itself in Will's transformed body. Hannibal stroked along Will's sides and watched his hands against the pale flesh. There was no response, Will's eyelids only fluttered and his body twitched under the weight of the dog but no more. His skin had changed from an ordinary healthy colour into a shocking, white sallow pallor. The greens of his veins were much more visible and to the untrained eye, it looked like a corpse had been bedded by the demon canine instead of someone very much alive.

 

“Tomorrow,” Hannibal said.

 

Hannibal smiled lovingly at the unconscious form of Will Graham.

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter are as follows; mpreg, monster sex, womb distention, tentacle non-con, monster bestiality non-con and underage (teenaged Will), attempted suicide and impregnation. 
> 
> I added an underage warning for the whole fanfic, even though it's only in one chapter. 
> 
> Enjoy!

IV

 

The dogs were fed and the garbage was taken to the box at the front Will's driveway that he's required to use according to a town by-law shoe horned into his rural area. The morning sun was high in the sky despite the chill but Will had known before morning that something had changed because he felt the sharp teeth grow in his mouth fresh and copper tasting, born from ravaged gums. It was two days until he had to show up at Quantico to teach unless Jack called him to assess a new case, which gave him plenty of time. Will had put down extra food bowls for the dogs and made sure his fridge was mostly empty which was a far easier task than it should have been, due to poor personal habits and bachelor lifestyle.

 

Considering his career at the FBI and his studies in psychology (abnormal and otherwise), Will understood all the signs better than most. He knew he was undergoing a ritual fixation, which was a common impetus in suicide cases. If he were to be absolutely cruel, he would argue that at least he had a better reason than many. There wasn't a question anymore. He was turning into a monster. His preparations were not out of a genuine desire to die but a desperation to take back some control before it was too late.

 

“Good boy, Winston,” Will gave a pat to his newest stray as the dog gobbled down his food.

 

Will had some reservations due to the dogs because they were different now too. It would almost be worth it to live on with them in the wild. But with all of the patrols and jurisdictions dealing with monsters that have run amok, realistically he knew it would only be a matter of time before they were found and the FBI wouldn't spare canines from execution even if they were protecting their masters.

 

There were no regrets about the previous night. Will was just glad he hadn't managed to maul Dr. Lecter to death beforehand because the man had drawn something out of him, something primal and free. Satisfied that his life hadn't entirely been wasted on cold cases and pursuing unnameable evil, Will went upstairs to the spare bedroom full of plywood and took a medical box from a cupboard and brought it downstairs into the living room. The box had come with him to training at Quantico, it had been with him during his tenure as a cop and even has a lonely, underfed college student. It was his emergency kit, the one thing he hoped he'd have no reason to ever use.

 

As he loaded up the syringe Will thought he heard a car pull in. He knew the faster he hit the plunger the easier it'd be and he wasn't entirely sure with his new physiology how much he had to take, he wasn't a doctor. But the dosage list said it was lethal so he went for it and plunged the syringe into his arm. He had barely taken it out before it hit him, a hard drug haze.

 

Will watched his dogs as his vision went blurry. And then before going under he's positive he heard a car door slam. Will tried to remain conscious but blacked out instead, hopeful that he wouldn't leave the world murdering any would-be visitor.

 

“Hello, William,” the voice was accented but familiar.

 

Before he could register that Hannibal Lecter was in his house, he sank under.

 

It wasn't Will's expectation to wake up but he did. He also unfortunately woke up sick as one of his mutts after eating a dead badger in the woods. He had no concept of where he'd gone except that there was a bucket beside him that he gratefully expelled his vomit into.

 

“It wouldn't have worked,” Hannibal's voice smoothly told him, “not at a dose that small after so much transformation.”

 

“What's happening,” Will had barely got the words out before he'd been bent over the bucket again.

 

“They would have killed you,” Hannibal said, “I can't allow them to do that. You're a precious beast Will Graham, not to be wasted in the charnel houses at the FBI.”

 

Will spat the vomit and watched it slide down into the bucket in great black clots.

 

“I'd argue that,” he gasped.

 

When his body finished expelling everything it could, Hannibal injected him with something else before he'd had a chance to ask questions or fight back. Weak as a kitten already, he blacked out again.

 

When Will woke up next, he could tell he was in a barn or a utility building but not much else. The cold air and the fields he could see through the cracks in the ceiling had confirmed his suspicions. He crawled onto his fours and tried to clear the cotton from his head. Despite his best attempts at snuffing himself out, he wasn't entirely disappointed to be alive but he was terrifically confused. Dr. Lecter had apparently kidnapped him, taken him to an undisclosed location and left him there for reasons unknown. Perhaps the good Doctor wished for an experimental subject but Will had an instinctual notion that it wasn't the case.

 

“Hello?”

 

A voice.

 

Will considered it. It was a female, maybe his age or younger.

 

“Are you ok?” the voice again, “I can't...hear very well. If you're alive-”

 

It's with a thunderous recognition that Will recognized the voice as Miriam Lass.

 

“I'm over here,” Will said, the sound from his throat raw and scratched.

 

He leaned close to the edge of the hole and pressed his hand against the wall. He could hear the movements better from the right side so he assumed that Miriam was in the tunnel next to his.

 

“Boy, am I glad to hear you,” her voice trembled, “I haven't heard another voice in a long, long time.”

 

“The FBI searched for you,” Will said, “they didn't think you were alive. When I get out of here-”

 

“Are you with the FBI?” Miriam asked.

 

Will paused.

 

“I was a teacher,” he said, “but now, I think I'm out of a job.”

 

“I was a student,” Miriam said, “you probably know more about me than I know about you but that's okay. I'm just glad for some company.”

 

“Me too,” Will said, quietly.

 

“I think I can-,” Miriam said, “oh! I've got it! I can climb out!”

 

“Quickly,” Will said, excitedly, “before he comes back, we can get out of here!”

 

As thankful as he was for the rescue from his own self destruction, languishing as Dr. Lecter's prisoner wasn't an appealing prospect.

 

“I can almost,” she said, “make it!”

 

Strange sounds came from the tunnel next to his and he heard a disarming scraping sound as Miriam made her way to the surface.

 

“Up here,” she said, the voice now echoing from directly above him.

 

Something was dropped from above, it looked like a slimy rope. Will reached out to grab it but it writhed when his fingers touched it and he became aware that it wasn't a rescue operation at all.

 

“Shit!” Will said, with emphasis.

 

Despite the poor, fractured lighting Will could easily see the thing above him wasn't human at all, it had multitudes of eyes and was dripping slime from its black, writhing mass.

 

“Drat,” it said, sulkily, “you're not human either. What am I supposed to eat? He never brings anybody here anymore...”

 

It slithered away pulling up its tendrils but Will still clung to the opposite side, breathing hard from panic.

 

“You're Miriam Lass?” Will said shakily.

 

“I was,” it muttered, as the scraping noises started up again, “but I'm not really the same person anymore.”

 

“Yeah,” Will said, “right. I can see that.”

 

“It's what he does,” the thing said, “makes you find out what you're really made of.”

 

“Who does,” Will said, his mind tripping over itself trying to put the pieces together, “what do you mean?”

 

“Dr. Lecter,” it said, “he's a real nasty one too. Probably ancient, might have been around even before people were ever people at all.”

 

“He's an Old One,” Will said, brokenly.

 

“Sort of,” the creature shuffled, “I think he's more of an artist, really. Or what would pass for one in that terrible world. It was really clever when I thought about it- masquerade as a man and a psychologist, turns people into their worst nightmares.”

 

“What's his real name,” Will said, “I mean, what's he called by human beings when he does his work?”

 

“That's the brilliant part,” the monster sighed, “everyone thought he was just an ordinary, if exceptionally brilliant, serial killer. He's the Chesepeake Ripper and he caught me when I investigated his connections to a certain emergency room.”

 

Will felt the world tilt. His last big case, the one left unfinished. And he had solved it by nearly dying and getting kidnapped.

 

“And what happened to you,” Will said.

 

“He was fond of me,” it said, the voice wavering, “cut off my arm when I was still- more or less- human and sent it to his old friend. I figured that had to be Agent Crawford.”

 

“You'd figure right,” Will said.

 

At the bottom of his hole, Will curled into himself and wrapped his arms around his knees like a lost child.

 

“I wonder about you,” the creature previously known as Miriam Lass said.

 

“And why would that be,” Will said, then continued pressing his head against his knee caps.

 

“Because the way you act, you weren't even close to human when he brought you here,” she said, “and you kind of smell like him. So I wonder if you're the same species.”

 

“We're not,” Will snapped, “not even close. I've never done terrible things to people without reason.”

 

“Then I guess terrible things were done to you,” it said, “to make you like that.”

 

Will blinked against his knees. Why did it always come back to that?

 

“Yeah,” Will said, and made no further efforts towards conversation.

 

After several house of uneasy sleep, Will woke up and made use of the nasty looking bucket in the corner. What would have been much more unpleasant was rendered tolerable since his body wasn't exactly expelling anything approaching human waste but instead, a vile looking tarry substance that didn't smell at all. A small mercy in such a small space to be sure but rather worrying. It was followed up by the awful urge to vomit and he did, repeatedly.

 

“Everything hurts,” Will murmured, relieved to hear any voice that wasn't Miriam, even his own.

 

Briefly, Will wondered if the poison had worked itself from his system because every muscle in his body had decided to ache and he had to curl up into the fetal position beside his bucket to get any relief at all. His hands were nearly stuck in a curled shape and his tongue felt heavier than ever before. He did feel alert, however, which was a small mercy as he heard Dr. Lecter's arrival quite clearly.

 

The door opened far above him and he heard tools and things being jangled. Once the shuffling was done, fine shoes clipped along the worn boards that made up the barn floor until they stopped at the hole next to Will's.

 

“Miriam,” Dr. Lecter said in a kind tone, “I've been waiting for just the right moment to invite you to dinner.”

 

“What?” Miriam said, surprised, “But-I can't possibly go like this! I'm not ready to go, yet.”

 

“On the contrary, you've done very well and made remarkable progress. It's high time you left my care,” Dr. Lecter said, “and travelled more widely. But I shouldn't be so cruel as to let you free without a last fine cooked meal. There's a very limited guest list Miriam, just you and I and an old acquaintance who has made himself a liability in these troubled times.”

 

It wasn't hard to come to the conclusion that Hannibal liked to leave his charges hungry just for such occasions.

 

“All right,” Miriam said, “but what about him? Is he okay down there? I think he's sick, I heard him throwing up.”

 

“Will is the unfortunate by product of modern society, he hates what he is. However, by this time tomorrow,” Dr. Lecter said, “he'll be much improved, I promise.”

 

From the opening above him Will could see the wall opposite the doorway. The hulking shadow of Miriam Lass moved itself around above him and then he saw another shadow that Will knew logically should be Hannibal but it wasn't anything like the Dr. Lecter Will had known. It was a dark shape, like something made of black smoke and it had enormous stag-like horns. Red eyes glowed from the shadow in a way that should have been impossible and Will bit his wrist so hard he tasted blood to avoid screaming.

 

That night Will curled in on himself as his body wracked itself with pain, patently aware someone was being devoured by an enormous, monstrous creature that had once been a human being. He considered the possibilities for escape and quickly realized he would have to wait for an opportunity when Hannibal returned for whatever dread purpose he was no doubt planning.

 

Will had always wondered in an abstract way what beings both terminally evil and potentially billions of years old called fun. His answer while he worked for the bureau was an arbitrary if highly destructive series of events that culminated in getting humans to worship en masse and sacrificial orgies. Of course, Hannibal's interests seemed almost genteel by comparison.

 

“Miriam called you an artist,” Will said.

 

The light of morning had returned and with it, Hannibal Lecter who had scaled down a thin rope ladder as easily as a cat climbed a tree. Not a shred of the monster Will had glimpsed at the previous night remained, Hannibal was dressed impeccably in a plaid suit that Will was sure wouldn't be out of place during one of their appointments. He even wore Italian leather shoes despite the filth and grime carpeting the hole Will was languishing in.

 

“She is a very intelligent young woman,” Hannibal said, “and gives me far too much credit. After all, as any painter will tell you the materials that beget a work of art are just as important as the final piece.”

 

“I wonder how she can call what you do art,” Will said, “considering what you made her into.”

 

“I merely opened her eyes to the painting in front of her very own face,” Hannibal said.

 

Will said, “that may work if we're talking about psychiatry but I'm talking about- _something else_.”

 

“I am as inhuman as you are,” Hannibal said, with mild reproach, “in a way, we're a lot more human than some individuals who wear that particular designation in the FBI.”

 

“It's a clever disguise for what you do,” Will said, “I think- I knew about you even before but it was hard to see.”

 

“You didn't want to see,” Hannibal said, “there is a difference because you have always been fully capable of seeing the truth, even when it's well hidden. And your empathy disorder is a boon-”

 

“I'm not going to murder anybody,” Will spat, “I don't care what you try and make me do, it's not going to happen!”

 

Hannibal smiled, it was probably the first time Will had ever seen a real one. It was a bleak and ugly thing.

 

“I would never ask anything like you to hunt its own food,” Hannibal said, “that would be insulting. I will provide you with everything.”

 

From inside one of his suit pockets Hannibal pulled out a carefully wrapped rectangle no bigger than his palm and no thicker than an average steak. Will's entire body twitched, he could smell the contents.

 

“Take it,” Hannibal said, holding it out to him in cupped hands.

 

It was some kind of ritual offering, Will could tell and he shouldn't take it. But he couldn't help himself, he felt like he was starving to death just laying there, without moving. If he ever wanted to get out of the hole, he had to conserve his strength. So he went for it, quick as could be and snatched it from Hannibal's hands.

 

Unwrapped it was as Will had suspected, a fine cut of raw meat. It hadn't smelled like any animal Will had ever tried and it was bloody and sodden as though it had been purposefully butchered to keep the blood in when usually it was drained away. The first bite was the best and the rest Will gnawed viciously like an animal denied food for ages. All too soon, the small square was devoured and Will's throat began to close off.

 

“I can't-,” he gasped, “can't breathe!”

 

In the blink of an eye Hannibal was there to help him. He unbuttoned Will's filthy, flannel shirt and helped him wriggle from his trousers and the rest of his clothes. Finally the air touched his skin and Will felt a keen sense of relief. His skin had begun exuding a slime and the dirt and waste fell from it as though it was a natural repellant. Mud couldn't cling to his flesh or anything else, he writhed in the moisture at the bottom of the hole but still flinched when Hannibal reached out to touch him.

 

“It's extraordinarily rare that someone involved in that kind of rite ever survives the process,” Hannibal said, “and it takes years to awaken again after the first time. Do you remember what you did in the woods so many years ago?”

 

Will squirmed on the ground and tried to remember.

 

“After they laid you out on the stone table there must have been several beasts that came calling,” Hannibal said, “how they would have used your body to sate their crude lust. It would have been terrifying to recall, worse to remember every detail of your transformation afterwards.”

 

With complete horror Will felt the stirrings of a memory snapping at his mind.

 

“And such a memory you were gifted with as a boy,” Hannibal said, “it's no wonder you wiped it all from your head and tried your hardest to be as ordinary as possible. Then everyone would have thought it was simply a terrible rite gone awry, even when the bodies were found.”

 

He couldn't have.

 

“Out in those woods alone your infant children died,” Hannibal said, “lost without their mother. You abandoned them when you returned to human life that night and suffered ever since from a guilt impossible to explain. But the maternal instinct that was denied merely laid sleeping. The dogs were close but not quite enough, they began to change.”

 

On hands and knees, Will tried to crawl away. He couldn't go very far since the hole was only a few feet long.

 

“Come closer, Will,” Hannibal said.

 

The voice speaking to Will was warped and changed and Will panicked, knowing if he looked behind him he'd see a Hannibal more monster than man. His head pounded with memories scrambling to get out but he didn't want to see...he'd never wanted to see.

 

Will turned his head. His vision exploded and the Stag-Man blurred and warped in front of his eyes as though his visual cortex couldn't have hoped to keep up with what his mind was interpreting.

 

“Come closer.”

 

It was a hum in his head. Will got down low to the ground and writhed as his skin oozed and bit his own tongue hard when he felt his body literally open up in a deeply personal place. His tongue then split down the middle and snaked between his sharp teeth. His face must have been a mess of pale slime and blood and pink coloured spit. He was terrified. That thing was moving towards him, its blurred form taking on a more solid shape. It was phantom and it was solid, like smoke and darkness and red, evil eyes.

 

“ _Closer,”_ it whispered in a thousand different voices.

 

The Hannibal that had worn the suit was no more and in it's place wasn't the stag-man from before but a new, fiendish looking beast. An enormous raven coloured stag.

 

No matter how hard Will clawed at the rocks and dirt that made up his prison, he couldn't make purchase and climb out.

 

With a sound that was closer to an inhuman scream than an animal one, the gigantic black feathered stag mounted him. Its hooves cut into his back and forced his body to bend. Will's face was pressed to the filthy ground and his mouth tasted like his own blood as it scrambled to gain its footing on Will's slipper skin.

 

Unbidden from the deepest, darkest parts of Will's mind came memories that were frighteningly similar.

 

_Nude and scared he waits for them and they come, from the darkest part of the stars. Gigantic crawling monstrosities._

 

Will groaned as the raven coloured stag finally climbed on him sufficiently enough to press Will into a receptive position for its smoky, black tendrils. They writhe into him slowly, thoroughly opening up the wet, vile space created earlier.

 

_He thinks he's going to die but that's not what happens to him. They hold him down and with appendages Will can't even describe they penetrate him in every open orifice they can find._

 

It was supposed to be a scream that came from his throat and not a lustful sound that was inhuman and strange echoing in his ears. His back arched and he knew what to do to encourage the beast to mount him harder, he'd had a lot of practice with his dogs...and before.

 

_He's filled with their slime, choking on it and he screams and writhes and tries to get away but they keep coming, more and more of them until it's an orgy of writhing masses and Will can barely see his own millk white skin under the wriggling green mass._

 

“Hannibal,” Will groaned from under the monster's weight.

 

It's the last human sound he uttered before his tongue split its last solid length and Will found himself unable to utter anything approaching words at all. He felt what passed for a stag's penis enter him harder, deeper from behind in a wild thrusting motion and he knew with clarity that his body wasn't like an ordinary man's at all anymore because he could feel it stretch wider, what was once his human anus and rectum had been changed into a warm, liquid oozing womb for innumerable hideous offspring he'd be sure to produce in only a single day. And that thought sent his body convulsing backwards and squirming hard against the feather soft fur to get more length into him. As Will torqued his body as much as he could, he finally managed to sink hard all the way down to the base.

 

_They won't stop and Will doesn't want them to after a while. What they've done to him is unspeakably awful but they fill him up and make him like it and after a while they don't have to force him to do anything anymore._

 

The creature screamed a horrible, inhuman noise. It filled him up with voluminous quantities of black tarry substance that spilled down Will's legs in a sticky torrent. And then his body convulsed with it, an ecstatic climax that shook Will and made his abdomen ripple until he felt it into his bones.

 

_He couldn't stop himself if he wanted to and when they finally, finally let him go he's so used and hungry and full of wriggling babies..._

 

His womb was so full it was slightly distended. Will wasn't entirely sure if it was all semen or a mix of the creature's fluids and Will's own blood but it felt like the only thing that mattered at all, anymore.

 

_But miraculously as he feels his teeth growing sharper, there are all of these people just standing around in robes, stock still, waiting for him to start..._

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I could offer a reasonable excuse why this took me so long. Anyway, there's one more chapter left after this. Please be aware this chapter has erotic birth, bestiality, more monster sex and blood and gore. I hope you've enjoyed this surreal descent into a monster Hannibal/Will relationship.

 

V

 

The hole was only the beginning.

 

The rapidity of the transformation and how it effected his instincts was something Will would have loved to write a paper about if it were happening to someone else. Instead, the nightmare was happening to him.

 

Only a few days spent in the hole and Hannibal released Will to a deeper interior laboratory inside the barn. There was a bed in the corner, some buckets graciously left for Will to use (the disgusting tar was something he'd never get used to, he wondered if all monsters expelled that way) and there were other gifts, like books to read and a constant horrible sound that began at the back of Will's brain and spread to every nerve if he even contemplated going outside.

 

“Hormonal leashing,” Hannibal calmly explained to him, when he saw Will's gaze quickly flit towards the door that rapidly closed and vacuum sealed.

 

The meat Hannibal brought Will daily was clearly not an animal, it was human. And he found himself torn each time between rejecting it and devouring it until his mouth filled with saliva and his body quivered with need.

 

“Eat as much as you like,” Hannibal said as he delivered the daily 'meal' with an amused smirk, knowing Will wouldn't be able to fight the temptation to snatch the flesh from his hands.

 

Will couldn't stop the way he held the meat close to himself and ate quickly either, as though he imagined it would be taken away by some other creature. After all, technically Hannibal was predator and Will was predator; in the wild that meant competition.

 

“i see the caterpillar and I can whisper into the chrysalis,” Hannibal said, chuffed at Will's latest battle between instinct and rationality, “but it always surprises me what comes out.”

 

Will would have answered with a bitter retort but his mouth had become different and he hadn't been able to form human words at all for the last few blurry days. He shrieked at Hannibal instead, a nasty, bleating sound somewhere between a lizard-like hiss and a dolphin's screech. It was harsh to his ears, it would likely deafen human beings nearby. Worse yet, it always came out sounding like a pathetic plea for help.

 

“I have made you a new home,” Hannibal said, “we'll go there, tomorrow. After our liaison.”

 

The thought of being filled up with breeding fluid made Will's heart race and thighs clench eagerly even while his very much rational mind was disgusted.

 

Hannibal undid his suit jacket, then his tie and sat them both on a wooden table dyed maroon from all the washed and dried blood soaked into it.

 

“Come closer,” Hannibal said, his human voice making a mockery of such a command, “I'd like to see how far you've come.”

 

Even if it was inherently repulsive, Will knew his instincts liked the way Hannibal smelled, like death and darkness and deep, blood soaked earth. He had always assumed Hannibal's sharp nose had come from the culinary arts but now he knew different, that Hannibal was actually a monster in human disguise. He could have probably smelled Will's entire history the moment he stepped into his office

 

Will's back was straightening into an odd position and the shifting bones left him hunched over and crouching. He crawled pitifully towards Hannibal, his mouth already open in an obscene pant and his tongue lolling uncontrollably out of his mouth. What his eyes looked like, he didn't know but he wondered if they were the blood coloured swirl he had seen on the other monsters that terrible night as a teenager.

 

“Absolute perfection,” Hannibal said, his eyes darkening and body changing into shadow, “it's as if you were designed by my own hand.”

 

“ _Egoist,”_ Will wanted to say, instead he made an awful noise that hurt his own ears.

 

“I can almost understand the tone,” Hannibal said, his twisted mouth quirking upwards into a gruesome smirk.

 

The shadow form moved lightning fast and loomed like dark water over Will until he felt the claws touching his thighs and spreading him apart. The move forced him onto his back and his head leaned backwards as his pelvis tilted forward, aching and open. His penis was barely erect but that didn't matter much these days, the rest of him was alive and sensitive, alight with alien wants. The erect horns on Hannibal's head were a testament to his vitality, the strange smokiness that obscured his body hiding something big enough to fill Will up and not leave him wanting.

 

It was better than the dogs but somehow, even stranger.

 

Hannibal was a man and a beast all at once. His spindly fingers held Will down as his body morphed and thrust into him, making Will ache all over and his back arch. When Hannibal was the stag-man Will could grab Hannibal's arm and lean against the mess of blankets in the makeshift bed Hannibal provided for him and ride the hardness that bored into him. Will could lock his legs around the wraith thin waist and press up and up, until the black fluid spilled over and dripped underneath him. Until the thrusting filled Will's wet quivering insides and pressed its way deep into his womb.

 

“This is who you are,” Hannibal hissed from his abyss crack of a mouth, “who you've always been.”

 

_I know who I am_ , Will wished he could hiss back.

 

Instead he clung tighter to Hannibal's waist and witnessed the man and the monster combine into a love no human could hope to understand.

 

It was strange being in Hannibal's house after so much has happened but Hannibal lead him easily, leashing his instincts in the car's backseat as they drove carefully, cautiously. Will was covered by blankets, moistened with a spray bottle and made comfortable. When they arrive, he's carried blanket and all until they make their way through the front door and down, down into the basement. He's gently plunked on a bench as Hannibal makes himself sure the doors are locked and closed behind them.

 

Will immediately recognizes the basement for what it is once Hannibal sees fit to unwrap him; it's a kill floor. The manacles and clean gurneys and autopsy tables were probably quietly purchased and fitted through the many hospitals Hannibal worked in over the years. He must have been so careful, picking them out one by one without anyone noticing the extra supplies on the floors that mysteriously disappeared.

 

The Ripper's many virtuoso performances must have begun in the basement but the real Ripper was much worse than a man who killed.

 

Will was almost a little let down. The singular motive he had assumed was almost on target but not quite. Human curiosity was one thing, the monsters that thrived in absolute darkness quite another.

 

Through rubber flaps and down rickety stairs, Hannibal carried Will until the walls became earth and the sound of water was the only ambient noise heard.

 

“It is best for you to give birth underground,” Hannibal said, “the young can flee into these tunnels. They stretch all across the city, I have no idea who made them but I wish I could thank them for their ingenuity.”

 

Will looked with his fresh, new eyes into the darkness and could see every mound of earth and every leaking pipe. It was possible they had begun as plumbing tunnels or an aborted subway but now they were abandoned and had become the realm of a monster.

 

“It is also possible that I may try to eat my own young,” Hannibal admitted, almost bashful, “that would not be ideal, so I will return for you after the act has been done. I have left your old nesting material and some warm blankets. I will return in a few days with some nourishment and then leave you to the rest.”

 

The boxes of bones were neatly stacked in an offshoot cavern that led away from the main tunnel. It was quiet and dark and damp, Will nearly fled into its confines relieved to get away from Hannibal. When he turned around he could see Hannibal's red eyes as they glinted in the dark, his horns reflecting in the light as they vanished into the tunnel.

 

As promised, Hannibal didn't come back for a few days. Will built his nest out of the human bones he had painstakingly collected from osteological collections and the FBI's on site mortuary services. He made them into patterns using the muck he carefully scraped from the walls and his own, sticky excrement to hold them in place. The skulls peered out like silent witnesses and the bones almost seemed to vibrate with barely contained life.

 

Will's stomach swelled and writhed, and he grew strange, black protrusions from his chest that bled and trickled blue slime. At the same time, the bones were spiralling like a nautilus and took shape and pattern becoming an elaborate twining shelter within the cavern itself.

 

By the time Hannibal reappeared, the bone nest was complete. Will felt tired but ready for whatever course nature would take.

 

“I brought some supplies,” Hannibal said, “and a few friends.”

 

The dogs that ran out from behind Hannibal in a barking, cheery brood were a surprise and Will was so grateful it was disgusting. He had wondered what had happened to his loyal pets, if the FBI had neutralized them or found them starved to death. Instead they crowded around his newly changed form without judgement, happily lapping at his face. Will hated Hannibal desperately for giving him something so wonderful.

 

“They'll help you when I cannot,” Hannibal said, “I'll leave the food, if you need more I'm sure your dogs can hunt quite capably.”

 

Perhaps that was the difference between their two genders, Will thought wryly, Hannibal worked alone whereas Will had created his own support network by tainting everything he loved. He wondered what Abigail was doing, where she was. If she were all right. If he had perhaps caused her death incidentally by poisoning her with his presence.

 

“Nature is a struggle,” Hannibal said, “it is incredibly beautiful to see it happen to someone as interesting as yourself.”

 

Hannibal leaned down and gave Will a kiss hard enough to cause his own teeth to cut their lips.

 

“I'll come back in a few weeks,” Hannibal promised.

 

The horns and black skin bled over Hannibal's pale, civilized human suit like ink on paper until he was nothing but a shade, a strange tremulous presence in the dark underground. His red eyes blinked in the darkness and then vanished, disappearing into the cavern leaving Will to himself.

 

Will crawled over to his food and set about feeding his animals. They snapped at the human flesh eagerly, their furry bodies black as pitch and teeth rolling in their mouths. They didn't look anything like their normal canine selves any more, rather they had changed as Will had changed and were monstrous beasts. Fiends in the darkness, horrors to behold. With some regret knowing the source of his meal, Will ate some small morsels and made his way into his bone shelter where he had folded and bunched all the blankets. He gracelessly fell over onto the pile and closed his eyes.

 

It was the dream about Abigail that woke him up. He was having dinner with Hannibal and Alana and his sad, doe eyed surrogate daughter looked at him as though he were the one responsible for everything. Though, logically, he knew it was unhappy chance that had brought them together, the fiend inside wailed at the missed chance to drag Abigail into his pit. A sharp pain in his stomach had Will looking down at himself while Hannibal and Alana placidly looked on, the beasts that crawled out were far from human.

 

“I have made a dinner suitable for the new arrivals,” Hannibal said, in a strange faraway voice, “it was caught with great care.”

 

On a delicate, silver serving tray was the human hand of Miriam Lass. Abigail screamed and hid her face in her hands while Alana watched her carefully, scrutinizing her for cracks. Will slowly stood up from the table as his children fell wetly from his stomach, onto his plate and took a steak knife from his setting. He walked quickly towards Hannibal and stabbed him in the neck.

 

“You are beautiful,” Hannibal whispered in his tremulous, stag-man voice, “so wonderful to look at.”

 

“I forgive you,” Will said, in a voice broken and tired.

 

Hannibal returned Will's love with a knife to the stomach.

 

Waking up rather sharply, Will realized that while the wound had been dreamed the pain was real. Groaning he could barely sit up, his back bending and body contorting to prepare itself for what was to come.

 

Yipping wildly the dogs surrounded Will as he groaned and panted, his mouth dripping slime and body sticky with sweat. The ripple he felt through his body forced him to his hands and knees with his hind quarters in the air, while his thighs clenched and quivered. As his knees dug into his blankets he felt his hole open up in a way it hadn't even with Hannibal's monstrous form. The ache however, was startlingly similar.

 

If Will could have screamed, he would have. Instead his throat produced the humiliating, plaintive bleats that echoed in the cavern and made his dogs swarm around him in a protective circle. His body clenching he gasped into the ground as the first round of his children were forced from his body. His orifice shook and clenched until the first was spat out, then the second. Impossibly it seemed, the third. Then fourth...then too many to count.

 

Will felt the shudder roll up his back each time the pain hit him and rubbed himself frantically against his blanket nest. The slime covered, oozing creature that he managed to expel wasn't holding his attention but the orgasmic bliss he experienced each time he managed to force one out certainly was. Aching with want, he groaned and managed what he hoped was the final round.

 

Weak from exertion, his body shuddered and he came wretchedly against the cloth, his flank shuddering and his lower body expelling the last of the fluids that had held his children inside his womb for all this time. Collapsing onto his side, he felt he scrabble of tiny claws and teeth against his abdomen and chest. The profusions had shown their uses. But the multitudes of children were fighting and clawing at one another to get to their nourishment.

 

A few drinks and the creatures scurried away one by one into the dark. Will got a good look as they came closer and sorely wish he hadn't. They were monstrous. No eyes, skin wet and milky and nubs growing from the top of their head. Their limbs were spindly and long, almost human but not quite. What they would look like when mature, Will had no desire to find out. He was too weak to kill them and too tired to push them away. He let them have their last meal before they made their way into the deeper caverns and left Will a sodden, exhausted heap. The dogs came closer and began licking him clean, he let them attempt to clear the mess but eventually gave up when the largest (Winston, perhaps? It was hard to tell as their coats had all become pitch black), became interested in mounting his prone body.

 

It was something he had no strength left to fight against. He reached down and grabbed his penis and jacked off frantically, aroused to the point of pain while his dog mounted him in sheets musty with the smell of bones and death. The others gathered around wagging their tails, waiting their turn.

 

It almost made him feel human.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter is here and this story is complete, rejoice! It means I can move onto other things. I hope you enjoyed this horrible little adventure and monster Hannigram. Thank-you for reading, as always. And if you'd like more monsters in the future, leave a comment below.

VI

 

Will pressed his face to the finest wooden floor he had ever lain against and wondered why he could hear the classic music louder than the guests' voices. It was perhaps because his new hearing was attuned to a different frequency than his old one and the soft wails of a violin were closer to the cries he was accustomed to coming from a dark, dank tunnel under the earth.

 

“I never took you for a derider of Chopin's excesses,” a woman said, rather loudly, “after all the _flowers_ you sent me, Hannibal!”

 

Polite laughter followed and the conversation dimmed.

 

With some difficulty, Will lifted his head from the floor and considered his current prison. Hannibal's guest bedroom had been outfitted especially, the attached bathroom even had a beautiful claw foot tub half filled with murky, swampy water hauled from a dank well. The bubbling sound from the corner was a humidifier that had been placed to offset Will's unique environmental requirements. The bed had no frame, instead the mattress was close to the ground and the room stripped nearly clean. It was possible it was the only room in the house that lacked ornate decoration. Instead the closet had been carefully filled with blankets and sheets that Will could easily push aside to find a false back. Behind that false back was an old servant's hall that lead deep down under the ground for miles. If Will followed its twisting turns he would eventually find his bone nest and the children that still needed him to survive.

 

Today however, he had been pulled from his nest and deposited in the guest room. Hannibal was having a dinner party downstairs and Will was his silent, secret guest.

 

The worst thing about being a monster, Will thought, was that he couldn't seem to read human words any longer. There had been books in the room at first but Will had shredded them in a furious tantrum when he realized he couldn't understand the words on the page. It wasn't enough to be bored to death in a prison that Hannibal made for him, it was worse that he couldn't do anything to alleviate it. That he couldn't seem to write, or speak and all human communication was cut off to him.

 

Earlier that afternoon, he had papered the unadorned walls with the torn of pages of Hannibal's gifted library using his own sticky excrement; furiously and with incredible purpose he had built a spiralling decoration on Hannibal's previously pristine walls. He marvelled at his own grotesque decor, and appreciated the rotten smell that began to permeate everything in the room.

 

“This is very interesting,” Hannibal had said as he examined Will's frustrated exercise, “did you realize you had wall papered Sartre's _Being and Nothingness_ directly beside Kierkegaard's _Fear and Trembling_? ”

 

Will glared at him and bleated, hoping he'd get the message. It was supposed to piss him off, not amuse him.

 

“I know it must be very difficult,” Hannibal said, gently, “as a man of learning I understand how painful it must be to have that particular outlet denied. But consider this a second childhood; eventually speech and writing, along with reading will be returned to you. You must re-learn everything for your new body.”

 

It wasn't very comforting but very little was, especially when he knew what was on the fine china plate Hannibal laid onto the floor next to the bed. Will had hurled one at him the day before and Hannibal had only tutted and mentioned how rare and expensive bone china had become and that it would only be fair if he had collected some bones of his own as payment. With a sudden nervousness Will had felt irrationally protective of his bone nest. He had refrained from breaking any more dishes, just in case.

 

The fiend knew him better than he knew himself, at the moment.

 

“I will return after dinner,” Hannibal said, “you may wish to retire to the bath, I believe the guest I have in mind will be sensitive to such pungent smells.”

 

With that last remark he had left Will to listen carefully, his ear against the wood floor and curiosity nearly smothered from an all encompassing boredom. Hours of conversation later and the other guests began to disperse until there was only one. Will couldn't hear their voice from the floor but he could hear the low baritone of Hannibal's replies, unclear but certainly conversational.

 

The footsteps grew louder and the hallway creaked, it made Will terrifically nervous. Who was Hannibal bringing to him? Was he going to try and convince him to eat them, or perhaps...his heart sank and fluttered. Was it Abigail transformed?

 

“The change may be quite startling,” Hannibal said, “please, keep that in mind.”

 

The guest room door creaked open and a gust of fresh scented air blew into the room. She had raised a hand to her face at the strange, fetid smells but finally dropped it with wide and surprised eyes.

 

“Will,” Alana said, the person he had least expected, “is it really him, Hannibal?”

 

Earlier Will had looked into a mirror and regretted it. His face was still relatively the same but his tongue and teeth were wickedly pointed. His skin a ghastly, clammy colour and his veins starkly visible under his slightly moist skin. His eyes were also slightly swollen, swirled and red. He had two lids now, instead of one, the other appearing when the air became too dry. He wondered what Alana had seen for herself, how she catalogued his strange body with the protrusions along his chest and the bent, arched back.

 

“See for yourself,” Hannibal said.

 

The human form he wore shimmered under Will's gaze but Alana hadn't noticed, she was staring at Will instead. Her graceful form leaned over, examined him distantly. He writhed on the mattress, feeling painfully exposed. His arm reached out, whiter than it had ever been, his blue veins showing harshly under such translucent flesh. She took his hand.

 

“It's really him,” Alana gasped, “oh, Will! Who did this, Hannibal? What happened to him!”

 

“I found him,” Hannibal lied smoothly, “wandering in the countryside near his home.”

 

“The FBI searched his house,” Alana said, “and the grounds.”

 

“I believe he came back,” Hannibal said, “the dogs were never found.”

 

The dogs had of course been living in the tunnels with Will's recently born offspring, but Hannibal had omitted that. Will curled himself under a blanket, his nudity suddenly becoming embarrassing with Alana so poised and well dressed. She was an echo of a humanity he had lost.

 

“He's distressed,” Alana said, her voice cracking, “what are we going to do? Do you think he's- should the FBI be contacted?”

 

“I believe he's been bred,” Hannibal said.

 

_Yeah,_ Will thought bitterly, _by you, you monster._

 

“I'm not sure what happened to the children,” Hannibal said.

 

Alana exhaled heavily, “if he's bred they'll execute him. Or keep him for personal captive study in the archives.”

 

“You don't want that,” Hannibal said calmly.

 

“No,” Alana said, “of course I don't. Ethically I'm required by law to report this, to turn him in. But I-”

 

Alana looked at him with sad, beautiful eyes. Will writhed a little harder on his mattress, he still wanted her, just a bit differently from before.

 

“I can't-” Alana said distantly, “I don't know why...”

 

It was then that Will noticed the ripple around her form, the shimmer in her nature. Hannibal watched Alana eagerly, as though waiting for the exact moment when the shift would occur. It became clear that Will had helped along Hannibal's plan for Dr. Alana Bloom, it had perhaps been an opportunity he had been waiting for. A different kind of get for his collection. Like Miriam Lass, Hannibal had been feeding Alana a particular kind of meat and coercion, waiting until he had the perfect moment to begin her change.

 

Will's mouth watered and his thighs clenched. With some more time behind them, it was possible Alana could breed him, if she took to the transformation.

 

_No_ Will thought desperately, _you can't do this to her._

 

When Alana reached out and gently touched Will's cheek, Hannibal smiled behind her at Will.

 

It was an ugly, monstrous thing.

 

Apparently their species wasn't as isolated as Will had been prone to think. They were a pack animal and Hannibal was carefully curating his favourite members.

 

Will let out a violent, shrieking bleat that made Alana jump in surprise.

 

“Is it possible for him to communicate?” Alana asked.

 

“Not in a way humans understand,” Hannibal said, “I believe with frequent exposure, body language can help.”

 

_Run away_ , Will wanted to scream at her.

 

“Do you think he...understands,” Alana said.

 

“Very little,” Hannibal said.

 

Will gave him a sharp look, _Liar._

 

“He doesn't seem very happy,” Alana said.

 

She reached out for him and Will almost backed himself up into a wall, until her warm arms closed around his cold, clammy skin and she pressed his head against her chest.

 

“I'm going to help you, Will,” Alana said, while stroking his damp hair, “we're going to find out what happened to you.”

 

“Do you think it was done to him,” Hannibal said.

 

“He was a victim of an assault,” Alana said, “as a teenager. I found it in his records when I went snooping. Jack cleared him to be a special agent despite knowing about his history, he was a ticking time bomb and they pushed him to the very edge. I'm not turning him in, I can't in good conscience. It's not his fault.”

 

“Do you feel the same about Abigail?” Hannibal said.

 

“The jury is still out on how complicit she was in her father's transformation,” Alana snapped, “and in her own. We won't know anything until the trial.”

 

Will tensed up but Alana's warm hands soon had his muscles involuntarily relaxing. She smelled good. Almost human.

 

“I think we should bring Abigail to see Will,” Hannibal said.

 

“Are you crazy?” Alana said.

 

“I believe they may both be able to heal from the experience,” Hannibal said, “it would be easier before the trial began. No awkward explanations to Jack Crawford.”

 

“I'll consider it,” Alana said, “but don't expect miracles.”

 

Will made a strange noise against Alana's soft bosom as she stroked his hair, it almost sounded like a sad, rumbling purr.

 

Deep underneath Baltimore in the early morning hours, Will crept through his tunnels with his back so bent he was almost on all fours. The creatures in the dark came out out of their dark corners and climbed down around the piles of spiral shaped bones until they found Will, who offered up the sores on his chest as sustenance.

 

Laying down in his nest Will considered the patterns of bones above him and let the children have their fill. When their creeping bodies fled into the dark caverns once again, he closed his eyes and tried to relive the soft, sweet smelling strokes he'd received that evening. Glancing at the last of his children scurrying into the dark, Will also thought about Abigail. She was as much his child as any of the awful horde that roamed in the dark tunnels, quickly growing into their own teeth and claws. Soon they would be self sufficient and Will would have no more work to do with them. He wanted desperately to teach Abigail how to be self sufficient, too. Far away from Hannibal and his machinations.

 

“I thought I would find you here,” the filmy voice whispered in the dark, “have our children grown strong? I think it is time for them to leave the nest and for you to return to our home until the next birth.”

 

Will rose from his blanket nest and crept towards Hannibal's shadowy, horned figure.

 

“I-,” Will hacked out, choking on his own tongue, “know, who I am.”

 

They were almost words, buried under wet sounds and throat gurgles. Nothing a human could have ever made.

 

Hannibal smiled indulgently at Will, his mouth a gaping black hole.

 

“So do I.”

 

_Ia Shub-Niggurath, the black goat of the wood with a thousand young!_


End file.
